Emergencies can include natural disasters, terror attacks, violent crimes, infrastructure breakdown, hazardous material accidents, and other dangers that can potentially harm a large number of people. Clear communications is crucial in effectively managing emergencies and emergency responses.
Cellular telephones have many properties for effective emergency communications. They are usually in the possession of the communication recipient, they are not reliant on being at a specific location or plugged into a physical location, and people are comfortable with them.
However, cellular telephones have extensive resource overhead which prohibits setting up calls to people affected by an emergency. For example, cellular circuits would be overloaded if calls are made to all students on a school campus in case of an emergency. In addition, it would time-consuming to initiate many phone calls.
Short Message Service (SMS) allows the delivery of text messages to cellular phones of individuals. While SMS messages are delivered over cellular networks, they require very little resource overhead and can easily be broadcasted to a large target population.
Thus, there is a need to provide improved information broadcast in an emergency environment.